How to Freeze the Pentagon

In July, freshman congressman Mick Mulvaney (R-S.C.), along with Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), introduced an amendment to the House’s 2013 defense appropriations bill freezing defense spending at 2012 levels. Though it merely eliminates a proposed $1.1 billion increasein defense spending, the Mulvaney-Frank amendment was an acknowledgment that the endless military-spending hikes since 9/11 cannot continue. The legislation passed the House 247-167, with 88 Republicans in support, and the Senate will take up the bill this September.

American Conservative contributor Michael Ostrolenk, co-founder and national director of the Liberty Coalition, caught up with Congressman Mulvaney before the August recess to discuss conservative support for a more fiscally sound national defense.

TAC:Why is this an important issue for you?

Mick Mulvaney:I think it is important that conservatives show a willingness to look at all spending with the same level of critical analysis. To think that the Defense Department is somehow immune from the same tendencies toward inefficiency and waste as we know all other areas of government to possess, is just absurd. More importantly, perhaps, showing that willingness builds our credibility when it comes to reducing spending elsewhere. Put another way: if we show a willingness to at the very least freeze defense spending, it may well send the message that we are deadly serious about our spending problems, and not just using the deficit as a convenient excuse to cut spending on programs that we generally just don’t like.

TAC: What pushback did you receive and how will you overcome it in the future?

MM:The conversations with my colleagues were fairly simple and focused mostly on educating folks on what the amendment was, and was not. For example, many initially thought that this was somehow related to the sequester; it wasn’t. And others thought it represented a cut; it was actually just a freeze. Once we were able to get down to the facts of the matter, the amendment was an easy sell to many conservatives. The push back was mostly from the appropriators, who believed that the bill was fine as it was. They also attempted, for a short time at least, to argue that we had “already cut defense substantially” or that we were somehow “gutting” the defense budget. Again, the best tools here working in our favor were the facts: the cuts mentioned were to the War Budget and not the base budget; the “gutting” was only 0.17 percent of the total defense budget; etc. It is somewhat encouraging that, at the end of the day, the facts won out.

TAC:With military operations finished in Iraq, the conventional war in Afghanistan winding down and the fact that the U.S. is $16 trillion dollars in debt, is it a good time to not only freeze Pentagon budgets but to look at seriously cutting pork programs at DOD?

MM:Clearly. But to do so will take a much larger commitment from Republicans in general and conservatives in particular. Too many Members of Congress are still afraid to cut even a penny from the defense budget out of fear of looking “weak on defense.” We need to change the culture that exists now that equates dollars spent with commitment to national defense. Certainly, there is a link between the two at some point, but wanting to be smart with taxpayer dollars and defending the nation are far from mutually exclusive.

TAC:Many Republicans are warning that possible future cuts to the Pentagon will lead to job loss and economic impacts. That sounds a lot like military Keynesianism. How do you respond to such warnings?

MM: Republicans are just as guilty of flawed Keynesian thinking when it comes to defense spending as Democrats are on social spending. Indeed, that flaw weakens our correct argument we make against social spending, as it allows the opposition to easily—and accurately—cast us as hypocrites. Government spending is government spending, and it does not magically have different impacts on aggregate demand just because it is spent on guns instead of delivering the mail. We have to be courageous in our convictions that government spending does not create net new jobs. Period. We need to divorce the jobs discussion from the military spending/national security discussion.

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13 Responses to How to Freeze the Pentagon

The defense budget has nearly doubled since 911. Compared to the rest of the world, the US could cut its’ defense budget in half, and still be outspending the next biggest spender (China) by a wide margin. Every dollar spent on defense is a dollar taken away from education, healthcare, law enforcement, and infrastructure maintentance. We are at the point where we have cut away all the fat, removed most of the muscle, and are now tearing away at bone marrow…while the defense budget becomes more bloated with each passing day, most of it dedicated to two unwinnable wars started by Dubya. Take into consideration this massive expenditure on defense with the huge interest payments on previous debt, and Obama has very little wiggle room to make spending cuts.

E-5 tire inflators in the Air Force get $40k re-signing bonuses. Enlisted guys can join a program which puts them through four years of college if they agree to become officers after graduating (and while they study they get an officer’s salary and living stipends). College grads who sign up as officers in the Navy can be part of a program which pays their way through any law school if they agree to become a JAG lawyer afterward (and they get a $80k/yr salary and housing pay while they are studying law). Federal positions are going to nothing but veterans (“Non-vets need not apply”). NIH and NCI are forced to hire University of Phoenix degreed military vets over Stanford and Northwestern graduates with clinical experience. There is a robust tech sector– computer/engineering field– largely because it is gobs of defense dollars (either one or two or three degrees of separation). Most people don’t release businesses like Oracle and other software companies have huge defense dollar projects. And while a lot of great stuff comes out of it, and very smart people work hard in it, the tech sector is one big federal jobs program.

Ronald Reagan,
” During my 1980 campaign, I called federal waste and fraud a national scandal. We knew we could never rebuild America’s strength without first controlling the exploding cost of defense programs, and we’re doing it.”

There’s a whole lot of fat in both defense and domestic spending. Obesity, drug abuse, alcoholism, etc. are lifestyle issues on which a lot of healthcare dollars are spent.
Educational attainment has much more to do with parental and child attitudes than with money.

Military increase spending is required due to the dollars worth/value dropping by 1/3 in the past 3 years.
I have a seious concern–senior citizens–pensions and savings not enough for food and shelter and not enough money to bury them.
What is needed to cure America’s ills–no standing army. Since 1776, America has invaded countless countries and killed millions. Military is a blight on USA–get rid of it.

Since we got rid of the WAR DEPARTMENT long ago for the DEFENSE DEPARTMENT, why is it still a war department.Get all of our military home where they belong and keep only what we need for defense of the United States only, not every foreign country.

Freeze the pentagon? Why don’t we destroy it? It has killed millions of people unjustly for lies and for corporate and personal profit. Why should anyone with any type of connection to reality, principles or ethics advocate for “trimming” This guy called himself a conservative well I guess that is apt since he proposes conserving the vile status quo with a freeze. Why don’t we destroy the status quo and not conserve it? What are so called conservatives conserving besides a vile, mass murdering, enslavement to the war machine from which over 60% of the federal debt is contrived? Give that 2.5 trillion stolen from social security and given to the war machine back now!

If you want to freeze the Pentagon, it would help to remind militarists and their next of kin that taxation really is robbery. So, the DoD is financed by crime organized under the color of law. Sure enough, self-defense against the robbery has been criminalized.

Now, it’s not hard to see why the militarists, or warmongers, want military socialism subsidized with looted wealth. They want something, BUT THEY HAVE A SENSE OF ENTITLEMENT TO OTHER PEOPLE PAYING FOR IT AND TO THE GOVERNMENT ARRANGING THE TRANSACTIONS. This is how we can know that militarists are parasites like welfare recipients. This fact, too, should be fed to families with militarists.

To bring Publius’ war machine under control will require also a prolonged attack upon the machine’s foundations and a civil war among members of the bar. The following remarks about the Constitution are as good a place as any to begin:

The one clause of Article VII implies its own lack of lawfulness prior to establishment while at the same time purporting to explain the conditions that will be sufficient for the establishment of itself. That clause even pretends to have some bearing on ratification. Nevertheless, Article VII would have to be a law before anyone could use it for its ostensible purpose.

The fatal flaw of Article VII needs to be formed into jagged little pills and shoved down the throat of every American lawyer except for those who understand the truth AND publicly affirm it. It should be promoted among the military’s officer corps and enlisted personnel, too.

Americans who want to do more than merely to undermine Publius’ military should adopt a religion that will help them to think and act in harmonious teams. Sorry, but that religion isn’t the one centered on a famous Jew, and it isn’t even theistic. We can, however, give a very brief outline of what the religion will be like:

logic
grammar
rhetoric

mathematics
physics
ethics
harmony

A nice feature of the religion is that it doesn’t need government sponsorship to sustain it. Better still, what one learns through practicing it can be used to make a living, which is a bonus not to be found among the fantastic religions unless, perhaps, one happens to be a mystical moocher.

If I am an American Conservative, do I not have a George Washington foreign policy?
Mind your own business.
No permanent allies.
No standing army. Admiral Yamamoto said it,”We cannot invade continental United States, there would be a rifle behind every blade of grass.” Exactly. Stand down, already

Our military-indutrial-STASI complex is the biggest macroparasite of all macroparasites. A value destroying institution sucking funds and above all intellectual capital from the rest of society, draining cash and human capital away from value adding parts of society eg education and infrastructure.

Above all it’s incompetent, witness the amount spent in blood and treasure cooking up and losing its wars on Al qaeda, all 1000 of them, the Irakis and the Pushtoon. Don Leone Panettone, when capo di capi at CIA last year told us that there were no Aqs in A’stan, getting a riposte from Gen. Jones who said that there were 100 of which 50 were in Pakistan. Getting George Will to point out that we are spending $1.6 billion for each AQ and not getting any closer to “victory”. Getting whipped by a few thousand Pushtoon armed with fertilizer and AK47s no less?

The US is addicted to and cannot getaway from its military-security-STASI war machine. Which is run by and for a massive Junker class with its own deeply entrenched caste structure going back four generations. Overpaid, double dipping, priviledged access to public sector coffers and chock full of entitlements showered on it by the tribunes of the people blurting ad nauseaum “thank you for your service” “Plunder the Treasury. Our US Treasury”.Indeed.

I applaud MM for the tough and principled stand he has taken. Much more must be done to control insane spending. But not all spending is equal, in effect or morality. I would much prefer a single American mother and infant have reliable access to food and health care than worry if a few jobs may be lost if the latest no-bid contract for weapons to kill people on the other side of the world is canceled. The only completely renewable resource is enemies. Blow up one, and make three more.

The US government is basically subsidizing the private defense industry sector. For that sector to make money, government needs to buy weapons. For the government to buy weapons, there must be an enemy to fight a war with. And look at how hard certain people in Washington are trying to hate certain countries and turn them into enemies. See the connection?